


Ardour

by spirrum



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Ficlets, Fluff, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 12:16:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3446858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirrum/pseuds/spirrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always starts with a touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. nothing like a little rain

**Author's Note:**

> Herein you'll find a collection of intimate one-shots and smut drabbles. Some of them are answers to fic prompts I receive on tumblr, and others are just spur-of-the-moment things because these two have charmed me so. 
> 
> Degree of explicit-ness will vary. If my particular style of writing is not for you, that's alright (but if you enjoy it, that's great!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "morning sex"

She’s an early riser, and it doesn’t matter if they’re at Skyhold or at camp in the middle of nowhere – she’ll be up before anyone else, sometimes even long before the sun. She’ll have tea ready for the others, and she’ll train and read and spend her solitary hours in the Maker’s company before they begin to stir in their tents. It’s ritualistic, and they all know her routines almost as well as she does, but – on the rare occasions they are on assignments together, Cassandra finds herself lingering.

She still wakes before the others, and long before he does, drawn from her slumber by habit more than anything else. It’s not yet dawn, and the inside of their tent is silent save the sound of his breathing, low and laboured against her ear, and the soft patter of rain against the tent roof.

Varric sleeps on his stomach, the wool blanket bunched up around his hips, and the sharp contours of his bare back emphasised by the odd pre-dawn shadows. Warmer than she’ll ever understand, she who needs several blankets so as not to freeze at night, his sleep is undisturbed by the chill creeping in from outside. But his arm rests a comfortable weight across her hip, and when she tucks herself closer Cassandra can forget, at least for a little while, the promise of the long, wet trek along the coast that awaits them in a few hours.

It’s a quiet start – a kiss against his shoulder or a touch to his jaw, and they are hers, these small intimacies; this slow and gentle appeal. Most times he will be the one to initiate – a hand on her waist, or a grin against her mouth in a dark corridor, fingers working loose the buckles on her armour even before the lock on the door turns behind them. And she loves it, the ravishing, the building heat and the  _urgency_ of it all _,_  but she loves these moments, too.

She feels him come awake by the change in his breathing, and his arm tightens around her, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of her pants, to brush against her stomach. Varric smiles into her neck, a silent greeting, and she feels the slight scrape of his stubble, as familiar to her now as the shape of his shoulders beneath her hands; the scars she finds jutting against her palms.

She doesn’t know if he’s the one who draws her closer or if she’s the one who moves, but it’s without effort that his hands find the cage of her ribs, her shirt tangling around her shoulders, and her laugh is breathless as she helps him pull it off. The air is cool and damp but his skin is near feverish to her touch, and his kisses fall with the rain, slow and lazy against her collarbones, along the rise of her breasts.

He’s already hard beneath the curling grip of her fingers but there’s no hurry in her movements, no urgency here, even as his breath turns ragged with a need she recognizes, and that makes her mouth curve with pleasure. Sleep still clings to his movements, but he knows her by heart, the feel of her and her reactions – the quickening of her breath when he takes his time, clever hands moving up the inside of her thigh, and the noise she makes when he dips a finger inside her. His answering chuckle is a shiver below her jaw, and Cassandra yields, mellow here as she is nowhere else.

When he sinks into her (or she onto him – it’s hard to tell which is true here, their legs tangled in the blankets and the rain a drum above and around them), she finds his weight a comfortable press against hers, and the uneven ground beneath the bedding is a small discomfort quickly forgotten between his slow, deliberate thrusts.

They don’t speak much. Other times in other places a biting remark might start them off and their touches will be hard,clawing and pulling, and she’ll be spitting insults even as her fingers work loose the fastenings on his pants. Sometimes he’ll use his words as well as his hands — crass, filthy things murmured low under his breath, against the shell of her ear until she comes apart around his fingers. But here their affection is muted, her sigh a shudder as he fills her, and his low groan lost in the dip of her throat when he comes. His fingers are quick to ensure her own release (another thing he knows by heart, by touch), and if her response is a little too loud, a little too wanton to be anything else for those awake and listening, Cassandra pretends the rain will swallow it.  

They don’t pull away at once, and she leaves her kisses by the curve of his ear, the metal of his earrings cool against her flushed skin. And it’s with care she combs her fingers through his loose hair, damp and curling slightly around her knuckles.  

He falls back asleep to her soft ministrations, and though she doesn’t follow Cassandra doesn’t move to get up either, even as the sounds of the others waking begin to drift through the walls of the tent – the early noises of pots clanking together and Bull’s low laughter through the persistent fall of rain.

And this is another ritual – a small and dear familiarity in an irregular world on the brink, quiet and private and theirs.

(or perhaps not so private, for no one really expects tea on these mornings, but they hide their smiles and pretend all they’ve heard is the sound of the rain)


	2. a fire of devotion

_And with one kiss_   
_You inspired a fire of devotion_   
_That lasted 20 years_   
_What kind of man_ _loves like this_

(Florence + the Machine, 'What Kind of Man')

[inspired by this artwork](http://moriesartworks.tumblr.com/post/111110943748/seems-like-my-cassarric-frenzy-doesnt-want-to-end)

.

Arms wrap around her, the coil of thick muscle shifting under damp skin and she groans, the sound lost against his lips. His hands are on her back, pressing against her spine, fingers following pathways known by heart until they come to rest on her hips,  _gripping_. 

A low laugh against her collar, and her pulse leaps. “Sitting comfortably, Seeker?” A question in clever, honeyed tones. Varric shifts, deliberately, and her breath hitches. She feels his grin, a quick and wicked thing, and whatever smart reply had been ready on her tongue is lost as he pushes inside her.

Warmth pools in her belly and with the next thrust it draws a noise from the bottom of her throat – a breathless, wanton thing, Maker take her for her inability to keep her wits about her. Her braid has come undone, curling damp against her neck and her breathing is a ragged sound, but she doesn’t  _care._

Hands fisting in his loose hair,  _tugging_ , she swallows his laughter, tightening her legs around his hips and now it’s his groan in her ears, a crass invocation of Andraste’s name. Her mouth slants against his, and the next thrust is hers. Hands grip her hips with more than just sweet affection now, and when he falls back against the mattress she follows, taking pleasure in the arch of his back, the throaty groan that falls from his lips.  

"Very," she answers finally, accent thick with nameless want, breathless,  _laughing._  He grins up at her where she sits, straddled across his waist. It often starts like this, with thrust and parry; taking a little, giving a little more, but when he’s on his back she’s on the offence, and her hands don’t cradle they grip, slender fingers curled around his length even as he’s buried deep. 

Her warmth is endless and her smile near blasphemic, and Varric is always -  _always_  lost. 


	3. don't you know he has a way with words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "learning what the other person likes sexually"

"Time to start talking, dwarf," she’d thrown the words in his face once, the tip of her blade at his throat and with a city falling to pieces around them. "They tell me you are good at it." 

Oh, and how  _very_  tempting it is to use that against her now. For it comes as something of a surprise, given her past reactions to this particular skill of his, to find that she likes it when he talks. 

.

It’s a discovery he makes surprisingly late in their romance, long after he’s familiarized himself with the feel of her beneath his hands – the way her back curves in response to a touch below her knee, the soft inhalation when he trails lazy fingers across the ridge of her ribs and the pleased hum lured from her lips when he flicks a scarred thumb over an exposed breast. It’s like writing; knowing the shape of the letters, the gentle curves and the sharp angles, and how much pressure it takes before the tip of the quill breaks against the paper.

It’s an accidental discovery, made late one night after a game of Wicked Grace when they’ve all had a few glasses too many, even the Seeker, judging by the rosy tint to her cheeks. They’ve stumbled into his quarters, and his hands are on the buckles of her belts, a rogue’s clever fingers working them loose even as he guidesher towards the bunk. And Cassandra’s laughter is a deep sound, rich like the wine that has loosened it from her tongue, her own hands aiding his until she’s stripped bare and it’s her skin against his own, long legs wrapped around his waist and her braid loose and dark against the sheets – like a blotch of ink on a blank page, unapologetic in its accidental sensuality.

His mind is muddled, his usual eloquence addled by the feel of her, hot and wet around his fingers, the rasp of her breath in his ears like a prayer, and he’s about to tell her – to revel in the indignation that’s bound to follow, that he would dare apply such a holy term to what she’s doing – when an entirely different idea strikes him. And it’s a fact that Varric knows rather well, that he’s at his most creative when he’s inebriated. Some of his best work has been written in the hazy grip of the Hanged Man’s finest, to be proofread the following morning with a headache pressing between his brows.

It begins with a thought – the stirring of an idea, and he speaks without thinking, allows the words to fall without reserve. It’s just a short excerpt from one of his books, one of the very first chapters of  _Swords & Shields, _andit leaps towards him from a page somewhere deep in his memory. It’s a relatively innocuous scene, but Varric lays emphasis on some of the words, mouth curving with his own cleverness as it warps the sentence into something sensuous and with an entirely different meaning than he’d intended when he’d first put quill to paper. 

“She wrapped her hand around the handle of his sword, fingers gripping tightly as she drew it from its sheath…”

Cassandra goes still beneath him, and in a moment of sudden clarity, Varric wonders if he hasn’t overstepped some sort of line, but –

_“Don’t stop.”_

And -- it’s magic. He might be a dwarf and he might not know how the sparkly shit actually works, but when she breathes the words they strike like a thunder-spell, igniting unnatural fire along his skin to burn all the way through to the bone. It’s as compelling a response as the soft flutter of her eyes, and Varric answers without hesitation. And as he takes his time with his hands, knuckles curving between the warm folds of her sex, he cites passages from his writing, some of them verbatim, but also cruder, filthier versions that never made it to the printing press, because he finds that these illicit the best results – a startled gasp, the slight lift of her hips, because she knows these passages almost better than he does (and he knows she also considers them lewder than most would). And so he embellishes a little more – adds some vulgarities his editor would never have let him get away with; deepens his voice and lets the words caress the shell of her ear.

“The Knight-Captain let him push her back against the desk, important documents scattering to the floor. He was hard against her, and she let herself be  _ravished._  His fingers slipped beneath her armour, grazing her–”

And he stops; lets the hitch of her breath settle in his ears, memorizing the sound as it dissolves into a moan that turns him almost painfully hard where he’s pressed against her hipbone.

“ _Varric,”_  she snaps, her grip tightening on his shoulders with the warning her words can’t convey in her current state. 

“What was that, Seeker?” Grin wide and wicked as it grazes the skin beneath his lips, he feels her draw a shuddering breath.  

“Continue,” she says, but the order is lacking its usual punch, and he’s tempted (oh he’s tempted) to tell her it sounds more like a plea. And he’s never heard her plea for anything, but he knows he could get her to do so now, as he lets his fingers go slack and he hears her groan – an almost desperate sound. 

“Flat on her back atop the desk, he came to settle between her hips,” he continues after a deliberate pause, and now he’s making shit up as he goes. The office scene was nothing more than a heated kiss in the actual book, because he’d never have gotten this sort of thing published. And he knows she likes this scene; he’s seen her edition of the chapter it’s from, lovingly dog-eared at this particular part, but he doesn’t feel bad about vulgarizing it when her back arches and a sigh falls from her lips that’s more erotic than she’d ever give herself credit for. 

“The door was unlocked and she had an audience scheduled any minute. Anyone could walk in and find them...but she couldn’t have cared less as he began…slowly peeling away the pieces of her armour.” A flick of his wrist, and a sharp inhale. “She was already wet when he plunged inside her.”

A deliberate thrust, and a low chuckle against her ear is the last straw, and he knows she’s about to come before she does – feels the clench of her muscles around his fingers, the legs tightening around his hips and her cry, an earnest sound in the cramped space of his quarters, throaty and lovely. And he might have chalked the shameless display up to the wine once, but now he knows better – knows her better, and this is a new knowledge he tucks away for later consideration. It’s a private thing – his own, he thinks,  _marvels_ , because for a woman whose life and deeds are known by so many, this revelation is something he doesn’t have to share with the world.

Varric extracts his fingers, and when she sags against the mattress, leaves a smiling kiss against the hollow of her throat where her pulse leaps. And he doesn’t say anything else after that, but in the laden quiet that follows lets the sound of her breathing fill his ears, a story in its own right and one that he’s immesurably pleased at having discovered. 

.

.

.

“I can never read your books in public again,” she tells him later while she lays curled against him, sketching lazy circles on his chest with a fingertip.

Varric grins. “Embarrassed, Seeker? And here I thought you enjoyed my creative adaptations.” 

“They were–” she hesitates, as though unsure of what to say.  _“Obscene,”_  she settles for at length, tongue wrapping around the word like it would a sin.

“Really? Compared to the sounds  _you_  were making, I’d say they were pretty innocent.”

She hits him for that, and buries her face in his shoulder to smother the smile he can feel despite her efforts, and Varric can’t hold back his laughter because for all that he can have her unravelling with the use of his fingers and words alone, it’s apparently going to take more than that to purge her Chantry-taught sensibilities. But he doesn’t mind – there’s time yet to learn what else can get her to throw her head back without restraint; to have her back arching with a pleasure that makes her blush to admit. 

But most of all, to draw sounds of gratitude from her throat the likes of which he’s sure even the Maker has not had the honour of hearing.


End file.
